THE TREADING OF THE WAY

We have seen, as we have
considered Rule XIV that, in the magical work, the critical point of objectivity
has now been reached by the aspirant. He is endeavouring to become a magical
creator and to accomplish two things:

1. Re-create his instrument
or mechanism of contact, so that the solar Angel has a vehicle, adequate for [582]the
expression of Reality. This involves, we noted, right type, quality, strength
and speed.

2. Build those subsidiary
forms of expression in the outer world through which the embodied Energy,
flowing through the re-created sheaths, can serve the world.

In the first case, the
aspirant is dealing with himself, working within his own circumference, and
thus learning to know himself, to change himself and to rebuild his form
aspect. In the other case, he is learning to be a server of the race, and to
construct those forms of expression which will embody the new ideas, the
emerging principles, and the new concepts which must govern and round out our
racial progress.

Remember that no man is a
disciple, in the Master's sense of the word, who is not a pioneer. A
registered response to spiritual truth, a realised pleasure in forward-looking
ideals, and a pleased acquiescence in the truths of the New Age do not
constitute discipleship. If it were so, the ranks of disciples would be
rapidly filled and this is sadly not the case. It is the ability to arrive at
an understanding of the next realisations which lie ahead of the human mind
which marks the aspirant, who stands at the threshold of accepted discipleship;
it is the power, wrought out in the crucible of strenuous inner experience, to
see the immediate vision and to grasp those concepts in which the mind must
necessarily clothe it, which give a man the right to be a recognised worker
with the plan (recognised by the Great Ones, if not recognised by the world);
it is the achievement of that spiritual orientation, held steadily—no matter
what the outer disturbance in the physical plane life may be—that signifies to
Those Who watch and seek for workers, that a man can be trusted to deal with
some small aspect of Their undertaken work; it is the capacity to submerge [583]and
to lose sight of the personal lower self in the task of world guidance, under
soul impulse, which lifts a man out of the ranks of the aspiring mystics into
those of the practical, though mystically minded, occultists.

This is an intensely
practical work, on which we are engaged; it is likewise of such proportions
that it will occupy all of a man's attention and time, even his entire thought
life, and will lead him to efficient expression in his personality task
(imposed by karmic limitation and inherited tendency) and to a steadfast
application of the creative and magical work. Discipleship is a synthesis of
hard work, intellectual unfoldment, steady aspiration and spiritual
orientation, plus the unusual qualities of positive harmlessness and the opened
eye which sees at will into the world of reality.

Certain considerations should
be brought to the notice of the disciple which—for the sake of clarity—we will
tabulate. To become an adept it will be necessary for the disciple to:

1. Enquire the Way.

2. Obey the inward impulses
of the soul.

3. Pay no attention to any
worldly consideration.

4. Live a life which is an
example to others.

These four requirements may
sound at the first superficial reading as easy of accomplishment, but if
carefully studied it will become apparent why an adept is a "rare
efflorescence of a generation of enquirers." Let us take up each of these
four points:

1. Enquire the Way.
We are told by one of the Masters that a whole generation of enquirers may only
produce one adept. Why should this be so? For two reasons:

First, the true enquirer is
one who avails himself of the wisdom of his generation, who is the best product
of his own period and yet who remains unsatisfied and with the [584]inner
longing for wisdom unappeased. To him there appears to be something of more
importance than knowledge and something of greater moment than the accumulated
experience of his own period and time. He recognises a step further on and seeks
to take it in order to gain something to add to the quota already gained by his
compeers. Nothing satisfies him until he finds the Way, and nothing appeases
the desire at the centre of his being except that which is found in the house
of his Father. He is what he is because he has tried all lesser ways and found
them wanting, and has submitted to many guides only to find them "blind
leaders of the blind". Nothing is left to him but to become his own guide
and find his own way home alone. In the loneliness which is the lot of
every true disciple are born that self-knowledge and self-reliance which will
fit him in his turn to be a Master. This loneliness is not due to any
separative spirit but to the conditions of the Way itself. Aspirants must carefully
bear this distinction in mind.

Secondly, the true enquirer
is one whose courage is of that rare kind which enables its possessor to stand
upright and to sound his own clear note in the very midst of the turmoil of the
world. He is one who has the eye trained to see beyond the fogs and miasmas of
the earth to that centre of peace which presides over all earth's happenings,
and that trained attentive ear which (having caught a whisper of the Voice of the
Silence) is kept tuned to that high vibration and is thus deaf to all lesser
alluring voices. This again brings loneliness and produces that aloofness
which all less evolved souls feel when in the presence of those who are forging
ahead.

A paradoxical situation is
brought about from the fact that the disciple is told to enquire the Way and
yet there is none to tell him. Those who know the Way may not speak, knowing
that the Path is constructed by the aspirant as the spinner spins its web out
of the centre [585]of
his own being. Thus only those souls flower forth into adepts in any specific
generation who have "trodden the winepress of the wrath of God alone"
or who (in other words) have worked out their karma alone and who have
intelligently taken up the task of treading the Path.

2. Obey the inward
impulses of the soul. Well do the teachers of the race instruct the
budding initiate to practise discrimination and train him in the arduous task
of distinguishing between:

a. Instinct and intuition.

b. Higher and lower mind.

c. Desire and spiritual impulse.

d. Selfish aspiration and divine incentive.

e. The urge emanating from the lunar lords, and the
unfoldment of the solar Lord.

It is no easy or flattering
task to find oneself out and to discover that perhaps even the service we have
rendered and our longing to study and work has had a basically selfish origin,
and resting on a desire for liberation or a distaste for the humdrum duties of
everyday. He who seeks to obey the impulses of the soul has to cultivate an
accuracy of summation and a truthfulness with himself which is rare indeed
these days. Let him say to himself "I must to my own Self be true"
and in the private moments of his life and in the secrecy of his own meditation
let him not gloss over one fault, nor excuse himself along a single line. Let
him learn to diagnose his own words, deeds, and motives, and to call things by
their true names. Only thus will he train himself in spiritual discrimination
and learn to recognise truth in all things. Only thus will the reality be
arrived at and the true self known.

3. Pay no consideration to
the prudential considerations of worldly science and sagacity. If the
aspirant has need to cultivate a capacity to walk alone, if he has to [586]develop
the ability to be truthful in all things, he has likewise need to cultivate
courage. It will be needful for him to run counter consistently to the world's
opinion, and to the very best expression of that opinion, and this with
frequency. He has to learn to do the right thing as he sees and knows it,
irrespective of the opinion of earth's greatest and most quoted. He must
depend upon himself and upon the conclusions he himself has come to in his
moments of spiritual communion and illumination. It is here that so many
aspirants fail. They do not do the very best they know; they fail to
act in detail as their inner voice tells them; they leave undone certain things
which they are prompted to do in their moments of meditation, and fail to speak
the word which their spiritual mentor, the Self, urges them to speak. It is
in the aggregate of these unaccomplished details that the big failures are
seen.

There are no trifles in the
life of the disciple and an unspoken word or unfulfilled action may prove the
factor which is holding a man from initiation.

4. Live a life which is an
example to others. Is it necessary for me to enlarge upon this? It seems
as if it should not be and yet here again is where men fail. What after all is
group service? Simply the life of example. He is the best exponent of the
Ageless Wisdom who lives each day in the place where is the life of the
disciple; he does not live it in the place where he thinks he should be.
Perhaps after all the quality which produces the greatest number of failures
among aspirants to adeptship is cowardice. Men fail to make good where they
are because they find some reason which makes them think they should be
elsewhere. Men run away, almost unrealising it, from difficulty, from
inharmonious conditions, from places which involve problems, and from
circumstances which call for action of a high sort and which are staged to draw
out the best that is in a man, [587]provided he stays in
them. They flee from themselves and from other people, instead of simply living
the life.

The adept speaks no word
which can hurt, harm or wound. Therefore he has had to learn the meaning of
speech in the midst of life's turmoil. He wastes no time in self pity or self
justification for he knows the law has placed him where he is, and where he
best can serve, and has learnt that difficulties are ever of a man's own making
and the result of his own mental attitude. If the incentive to justify himself
occurs he recognises it as a temptation to be avoided. He realises that each
word spoken, each deed undertaken and every look and thought has its effect for
good or for evil upon the group.